Descent into Delusion
by Sociially-Diisoriiented
Summary: He was beginning to understand what it was like to live, not to promote a cause or to advance his own interests, but just to feel alive. He thought he understood that this was what contentment, dare he say happiness, felt like. That was when the nightmares returned.


It didn't happen immediately after the war.

After the war, the tension that had been fraying at his nerves since sixth year dissipated overnight, and Draco felt so light with relief, so startled that his body still remembered how to relax, that he'd locked himself in his room and sobbed.

Father was sentenced to life in Azkaban, but Potter intervened on his and Mother's behalf and they escaped the war with their lives.

Once upon a time, Draco would have hated Potter for his moral righteousness—how dare he come to his rescue like he went to everyone else's rescue, who asked him anyway!—but Draco was so tired of hating.

He was grateful Mother had been spared from Azkaban. He was grateful _he _had been spared from Azkaban. For the first time in his life, Draco allowed himself to feel grateful for someone else's grace.

He never said anything, he never reached out, but on the few occasions when their paths crossed, Draco would hold Potter's gaze and nod at him—at Weasley and Granger, too. Harry always nodded back. Draco figured he understood. Harry had always had the right of it, but the war had changed them both. It had turned them into men.

After his pardon, Draco kept a low profile. He kept his distance from his former Slytherin classmates, and though he helped Mother organize galas that would show the world that the Malfoys were embracing the new tolerant ways, he rarely attended the events himself.

Instead, Draco took his time to reacquaint himself with life, to savour it in ways he had previously taken for granted. He strolled through the Malfoy Manor gardens, actually pausing to take note of which flowers were in bloom; how the trees colored differently in the fall; the various aromas that lingered in the air, depending on the season, and the sentiments they stirred within him when he inhaled deeply—how had he never _noticed_ any of these things before?

Often, he would surprise himself by pausing in his task, no matter what he was doing or where he was in the manor, and listening to the silence. It had not been silent often while Voldemort had occupied the Manor, but the silence that had existed had always been fraught with tension, anxiety, and dread. Draco could not recall a single moment when he had not felt on edge, his entire being extending outward like antennas, trying to gauge what awful thing would happen next.

Now, the silence vibrated quietly within manor and within himself. It sounded like peace. It felt like freedom.

Using Occlumency, Draco buried the past deep in his mind where he would never return. The nightmares which had plagued him for years stopped, and Draco finally allowed himself to feel optimistic for the future.

He was beginning to understand what it was like to live, not to promote a cause or to advance his own interests, but just to feel alive. He thought he understood that this was what contentment, dare he say happiness, felt like.

Above all else, Draco allowed himself to fall in love.

He married Astoria: beautiful, kind, patient, understanding Astoria, who quite inexplicably wanted him as much as he wanted her.

She taught him how to play and how to laugh just for the joy of it. They turned the Manor into a home bursting with color and light. Together, they planned for a new way of being a family, a balanced ideology between the traditions they cherished and a new inclusivity previously foreign to them.

When Astoria announced her pregnancy, Draco cried for the second time since the end of the war. He picked her up, twirled her around, and made love to her with a tenderness that still surprised him.

He hadn't thought his heart could get any fuller when he'd married her, but now he knew he'd been wrong.

He was going to be a father.

That was when the nightmares returned.

At first, the only symptoms were bouts of fitful sleep. He began sleeping only four to five hours a night, sometimes waking up more exhausted than when he went to sleep. Before long, the nightmares began to unroll like photographs without an endloop, though he never remembered them when he woke:

Fenrir Greyback, looking up at him, his human chin dripping with fresh blood, raw flesh crushed between his fangs as he bared his teeth in a wide grin.

Professor Burbage screaming and sobbing as she rotated up near the ceiling, pleading for help that would never come. Even in the dream, Draco could smell the acrid smell of urine and see the wet spots from when Burbage had emptied her bladder, the liquid trickling down her pant leg to drip down on the table. Draco prayed that none of the drops would land on his head.

Aunt Bellatrix and the glint of insane fervor in her eyes as she applied herself with unparalleled zeal to Draco's training, pushing and pounding into his head until the pressure pushed against every point of his skull and his nose began to bleed. Even now, even in his nightmare, he could hear her high-pitched shriek of delight as she goaded him on.

"_Do not disappoint our Lord with your weakness. Take control of your mind and push me out."_

"_Again, Draco!"_

"_Again!"_

"Draco!"

Draco's eyes flew open and, as his sleeping chamber filled his vision, the memories of his nightmares disappeared from his mind like fog lifting from the ground. But though his mind forgot, his body remembered, holding the nightmares trapped within his pounding heartbeat.

"My love. My love." Astoria knelt at his side, her hands fluttering over his chest.

Draco reached up and grabbed them, his only life line.

His head felt heavy and loud. He struggled to catch his breath. He couldn't bear to bring himself to look at Astoria and see the look of helpless concern on her face. By now, she was accustomed to waking him up from nightmares that had him moaning and sometimes shouting. He hated his weakness, and he hated waking her up from her much needed sleep.

Draco placed a hand lightly on her swollen belly and tried to convey that he was sorry.

This nightmare had been worse than all the others. He could feel it lingering at the edges of his consciousness. He could almost remember the sounds and tastes of the nightmare, if only he could remember _what _they had been about.

"You're all right, now," Astoria cooed softly as she used her free hand to brush her fingers through his hair, across his chin, and down his neck. "You're here with us, now. You're safe." She whispered this every time, and in the past, it had been enough to calm him, even to lull him back to sleep; but this time, he could only shake his head, unable to articulate why he had such a strong instinct that she was mistaken.

Draco closed his eyes, trying hard to let her loving voice soothe him back to tranquility.

"We'll be okay. It was just a nightmare."

But it _wasn't _just a nightmare. It had been real.

Draco's eyes flew open as all the memories suddenly came flooding back. He grasped Astoria's hand hard, though he did not hear her gasp of pain, as dread rose like bile in his throat.

He shot out of bed and only just made it to the toilet before he vomited.

Memory-images flashed through his mind:

Voldemort's noseless face, and his red menacing eyes;

Peter's simpering obedience;

Father's humiliation as he handed his wand over to Voldemort;

Bellatrix's gleeful laughter as she danced through the halls of Hogwarts;

the Carrow siblings' reign of terror at school;

Dumbledore falling from the Astronomy Tower.

Draco moaned, a low guttural sound of pain that came from deep within his gut.

How had he allowed himself to forget these memories? How had he allowed himself to repeat the same mistakes his parents had made? How could he condemn his bride and unborn child to the same fate Father had condemned Mother and him to? How could he have been so _stupid?_

Draco's body shook with fear as the onslaught of memories continued unabated. He felt cold and clammy all over.

He thought he might be sick again, but he forced himself to stand. He had to get Astoria away from here. Voldemort would return. He had to save them.

He turned and immediately stumbled back against the sink. In the doorway, blocking his path to the bedroom was Nagini, wide and swollen as she had been after swallowing her meal.

Draco could not think straight, his mind was still reeling from the assault of his buried memories and his body was paralyzed with fear at the sight of the snake, but he just _knew_ whose body it had to be inside Nagini's body.

Something inside of him broke loose and shattered.

"_Nooo_."

He instinctively raised a hand to ward her off even as he doubled over as pain wrenched his gut and shot through every in his limbs.

"Get away!"

Miraculously, Nagini stayed still in the doorway. She was as large and menacing as Draco remembered her, her head almost reaching the arch of the door. Her red slits of eyes followed him as Draco stumbled back further into the bathroom. It was a large and spacious room, but it only had one exit. Draco had left his wand on his bedside table.

"Get _away_!"

Nagini watched him for a while longer, and then slithered out of the room.

Draco collapsed, utterly drained. With his last remaining energy, he dragged himself to the tub and climbed in. It was deep enough to obscure him from view should someone look in the room. Hopefully, if Nagini came back, she wouldn't investigate the room too thoroughly.

Draco curled himself into a ball. He wanted to mourn his wife, but the memories which had stopped when confronted with a life-threatening predator returned immediately, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from sobbing out loud and drawing the snake back to him.

Eventually, Draco passed out.

* * *

Draco refused to talk about that night with Astoria, though she pleaded and begged.

He had been momentarily confused to wake up to find her sleeping against the bathtub, and then all he had been able to do was hold her and weep.

He refused to talk about what had happened, but he did not forget. And he understood the message.

From wherever he was, Voldemort had sent him a warning. He would return, and Draco would pay for his disloyalty.

The nightmares gradually seeped into the daytime, invading his every waking moment. He would be in the Manor library and suddenly all he could hear would be Granger's screams of agony as Aunt Bellatrix tortured her. When the memory and sounds faded away, Draco would find himself sitting against a bookshelf, head cradled in his hands, and throat scratchy and sore.

Astoria worried, Draco knew she did, but after the second time of Draco snapping at her for requesting that he go see help, she learned to stay quiet.

The guilt he felt for worrying her, for reducing her to such subservient silence, was but another ripple in the all-consuming anxiety and dread that plagued him incessantly. A state he remembered regrettably all too well from the war: a feeling of being watched all the time, of being monitored; a feeling that he was running out of time; a feeling that the silence around him hummed loudly in ominous anticipation.

A broken chant had begun in the back of his mind, low and calm, but constant and unrelenting, in Voldemort's characteristic soft, slithering voice: _Don't disssssapoint me, Draco._

Draco locked himself in the one room he found solace: the room containing his family's collection of Dark Artifacts. Why the Ministry had not confiscated them after the end of the war had been a source of bemused bafflement for Draco. Now, it was a source of unmitigated relief.

He claimed to be organizing them for a benign collection, maybe one day to be featured in the Museum of Magical Artifacts in Paris; in reality, he had begun cataloging them for a much more sinister reason.

He could feel Voldemort slither around his mind in approval every time Draco repaired a blemished artifact.

It was the only time Draco's mind ever felt quiet, now.

* * *

"What about Robert?" Astoria suggested, her eyelids drooping as she leaned back into her pillow. Despite her obvious exhaustion, she still glowed with radiant energy—the energy of life and love—as she smiled up at Draco, who was holding their newborn son.

Draco's heart plummeted. "No."

"_I_ quite like it. What is wrong with the name?"

Draco hesitated, unable to lift his eyes from the miracle that was his son, so fragile, so vulnerable, so _pure. _He knew, though, that Astoria was fixing him with one of her gorgeous chastising looks. "It's too Muggle."

"Yes, Draco, I know; that's the point. Ushering in the new era. Like we talked about."

"No," Draco repeated, a bit too forcefully, with a little too much venom in his voice. He winced as he heard Astoria sigh with exasperation.

"Well, what do _you_ suggest, then?" Astoria had a way of sounding stern without ever resorting to snapping or yelling. "Do you propose that our son spends the first day of his existence nameless?"

They had had this argument several times over the last months of Astoria's pregnancy, but Draco had been unable to commit himself to any of the names she had presented to him. None of them had felt right. None of them had pleased Voldemort.

Draco thought furiously, knowing that if he did not suggest a viable name, Astoria would go forward with her idea of a Muggle name. He could not allow her to put them in danger so recklessly.

Then, the perfect name slipped into his mind. "Scorpius," he whispered. "Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy."

"Oh, Draco," Astoria whispered. "That's a Pureblood name."

"It's a good, strong name," was what he replied, as Voldemort hissed his approval in his ear.

Draco handed Scorpius to Astoria and knew he had won as she smiled down at her firstborn child.

"Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy," she whispered at the sleeping infant. She kissed its cheek tenderly. "Yes. Yes, it is a good name."

Draco's heart felt heavy and full with the love he felt for his wife and son. He pushed a strand of hair out of Astoria's face and sat down on the edge of the bed. He understood, now, the lengths his mother had gone to, to ensure his safety during the war.

He had won this battle, and he knew he would do everything in his power to protect them for the rest of his life.

Even Voldemort would not defeat him in this.

* * *

**Word count: **2,495

**Prompt: **Write about a character descending into madness of any kind. (Quidditch League Competition Round 6)


End file.
